KS1 Topic Overview: Famous for more than five minutes
Study people who have made significant contributions both nationally and internationally. Be inspired by their achievements and try some projects in the same areas of expertise such as art, music, leadership, science, mathematics and invention. Be inspired by these role models, to dream of what you might achieve in the future. Choose famous people from the following broad historical eras: Tudor and Renaissance times (T), Victorian and early Modern times (V), Early Twentieth Century (E) and Late Twentieth /Early Twentieth Century (L). Each block will allow you to explore one or two changes in aspects of everyday life.
Block / Key N.C. Objectives / Main creative outcomesBlock A
Monarchs
(T) Elizabeth 1
(V) Queen Victoria
[6 sessions] / History, English and Art
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Compare aspects of life, identifying similarities and differences between different periods.
· Develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space.
· Use drawing and painting to develop and share their ideas and imagination.
· Compose sentences orally before writing them.
· Re-read what they have written to check that it makes sense.
· Write for different purposes.
· Use simple punctuation accurately.
· Identify the features of a command. / Compare the lives and reigns of Elizabeth 1 and Queen Victoria, two fascinating monarchs. Place their reigns and significant events within a chronological timeline. Identify the key roles of a monarch and facilitate further learning about these fascinating characters through a range of exciting and interactive activities.
Block B
Explorers
(T) Christopher Columbus
(E) Neil Armstrong
[7 sessions] / History, Science, Geography, Art and English
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Compare aspects of life, identifying similarities and differences between different periods.
· Use simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds.
· Name and locate the world’s seven continents and five oceans.
· Use aerial photographs and plan perspectives to recognise landmarks and basic human and physical features.
· Identify, name, compare and describe the simple physical properties and suitability of a variety of everyday materials, for particular uses.
· Use a range of materials creatively to design and make products.
· Write for different purposes.
· Segment spoken words into phonemes and represent these by graphemes, spelling many correctly.
· Participate in role play. / Develop historical knowledge and understanding of the lives and significance of Christopher Columbus and Neil Armstrong. Identify the kit needed for an expedition and compare the equipment taken by Columbus and Armstrong on their voyages. Discover navigation techniques and learn about the materials used by Columbus and Armstrong. Identify the properties of a range of materials for your own expedition. Go on to describe your own ‘expeditions’ using a range of media.
Block C
Artists
(V) Van Gogh
(E) L.S.Lowry
[6 sessions] / History, Art and English
· Understand about changes within living memory.
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements, some should be used to compare aspects of life in different periods.
· Understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses.
· Know about great artists, craftmakers and designers, and understand the historical and cultural development of their art forms.
· Learn to develop a wide range of art and design techniques using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space.
· Learn about the work of a range of artists, craft makers and designers, describing the differences and similarities between different practices and disciplines, and making links to their own work.
· Learn how to use both familiar and new punctuation correctly, including full stops, capital letters, exclamation marks, question marks, commas for lists, apostrophes for contracted forms and the possessive (singular). / Learn about the life, times and paintings of Van Gogh and L.S. Lowry and be inspired to create your own drawings and paintings in their styles. Generate questions to ask the artists; research their lives and replicate their works and styles. Consider the stories told by their works and become a critical artist in the process!
Block D
Composers
(V) Mozart
(L) Andrew Lloyd Weber
[6 sessions] / Music, History, D&T and English
· Use their voices expressively and creatively by singing songs and speaking chants and rhymes.
· Play tuned and untuned instruments musically.
· Listen with concentration and understanding to a range of high-quality live and recorded music.
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Learn about the differences between ways of life at different times.
· Ask relevant questions to extend their understanding and knowledge.
· Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates.
· Select from and use a range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks. / Learn about their lives and the musical contributions of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Compare their achievements, timelines and talents. Feel suspense and excitement and examine how musical extracts make you feel. Look at the differences between their eras then be transported to the theatre to experience the music they are famous for. Create musical theatre boxes and work together to create a class presentation!
Block E
Activists
(E) Rosa Parks
(L) Malala Yousafi
[6 sessions] / History, English, Drama and Global Citizenship
· Learn about events beyond living memory that are significant globally.
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to international achievements
· Understand some of the ways in which we find out about the past.
· Give a well-structured explanation to express feelings.
· Consider and evaluate different view points.
· Identify and explore characters through drama.
· Gain a sense of the wider world.
· Begin to understand the connection between their lives and lives of others.
· Gain an awareness that our actions have consequences.
· Gain a willingness to co-operate and participate. / Use this Block to explain to children that for many people across the world things happen that are unfair. Explore the influential lives of Rosa Parks and Malala Yousafzai and learn about their courageous acts against unfairness. Learn how anyone can try to make a stand against injustice.
Block F
Medical
(V)Mary Seacole
(E) Jennifer Worth
[6 sessions] / History, English, Science and Drama
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Understand about changes in living memory.
· Articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions.
· Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates.
· Give well-structured descriptions, explanations and narratives for different purposes, including for expressing feelings.
· Use their observations and ideas to suggest answers to questions, describe the importance for humans of exercise, eating the right amounts of different types of food, and hygiene.
· Use their observations and ideas to suggest answers to questions.
· Perform simple tests, record data. / Begin with a portrait of Mary Seacole and decipher clues about this historical figure, then travel back in time to become the characters in Jennifer Worth´s books. Examine the role of nurses today and find out what qualities are needed to become a nurse. Discover how to avoid being ill through healthy eating and exercise and have the opportunity to create a healthy food plate! Learn real nursing skills and test those skills on patient teddy!
Block G
Inventors
(T)Leonardo da Vinci
(E) The Wright Brothers
[7 sessions] / History, D&T, English and Art
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Generate, develop, model and communicate their ideas through talking, drawing, templates, mock-ups and, where appropriate, information and communication technology.
· Design purposeful, functional, appealing products for themselves and other users based on design criteria.
· Evaluate their ideas and products against design criteria.
· Select from and use a wide range of materials and components, according to their characteristics.
· Explore and use mechanisms in their products.
· Use drawing to develop and share their ideas.
· Compose sentences orally before writing them, to use subordination and co-ordination (e.g. ‘and’, ‘then’, ‘because’, ‘if’).
· Note down key words and ideas.
· Write for different purposes.
· Evaluate writing with the teacher. / Meet inventors from history, discuss and order their inventions on a timeline and start to ask ‘inventor questions’ that lead to inventions. Create technical drawings, design and build models and write tenders in role as inventors. Children will present their inventions to the class.
Block H
Mathematicians
(V)Ada Lovelace
(E)Alan Turing
[6 sessions] / History, Maths, Computing and D&T
· Know where the people and events studied fit within a chronological framework. Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Ask and answer questions. Explore changes within and beyond living memory.
· Use technology safely and respectfully, keeping personal information private.
· Recognise common uses of information technology beyond school.
· Use technology safely and respectfully and to purposefully create, organise, store, manipulate and retrieve digital content.
· Understand what algorithms are.
· Understand how algorithms are implemented as programs on digital devices, and that programs execute by following precise and unambiguous instructions.
· Create and debug simple programs.
· Interpret and construct simple tally charts and tables.
· Reason mathematically by following a line of enquiry.
· Develop an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language.
· Solve problems by applying mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems.
· Solve one-step problems that involve addition and subtraction or multiplication and division.
· Recognise and use the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction and use this to check calculations and solve missing number problems.
· Work with patterns of shapes, including those in different orientations.
· Order and arrange combinations of mathematical objects in patterns and sequences.
· Design and make purposeful, functional and appealing products for themselves and other users. / Learn about the key figures of Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing and learn about the fields of mathematics in which they worked. Compare modern-day and older technologies for calculating and programming and create a model mathematical function machine. Photograph patterns in the environment, use and create algorithms for common daily tasks. Finally, create and de-bug algorithms to solve ‘Bee-Bot’ problems.
Block I
Communicators
(pre T)William Caxton
(L)Tim Berners-Lee / History, Computing, English and Art
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements in communication.
· Compare aspects of life in different periods through the comparison of significant individuals and developments in communication.
· Use technology purposefully to create, organise, store, manipulate and retrieve digital content in the form of a book review blog/website.
· Recognise common uses of information technology beyond school such as book review sites.
· Discuss and express views about a wide range of texts.
· Write a book review.
· Compose a book review orally before writing it.
· Develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space. / Meet William Caxton and Tim Berners-Lee and discover how they both changed the way we communicate. Journey back through time to discover how people recreated and printed text in the past. Try out a variety of ways to reproduce your writing for mass consumption. Create edible illuminated manuscripts and your own printing press. Go on to create an online blog or website.
Block J
Ice explorers
(V)Shackleton
(E)Tensing Norgay / History, Geography, Science and Art
· Know where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods.
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Name and locate some of the world’s continents and oceans.
· Think scientifically, ask simple questions and recognise that they can be answered in different ways. Observe closely, using simple equipment and performing simple tests.
· Use their observations and ideas to suggest answers to questions, and gather and record data to help in answering questions.
· Learn about the work of other artists, and make links to their own work. / Research the polar expeditions of these two pioneers. Follow their journeys and understand what they needed to take on an expedition in extreme cold conditions. Find out about the development of materials and portable communication and carry out insulation experiments to design a good polar jacket.
Block K
Sportspeople
(E)Jesse Owens
(L) Ellie Simmonds / History, Computing, English and PE
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Know where the people and events they study fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences between ways of life in different periods.
· Use technology purposefully to create, organise, store, manipulate and retrieve digital content.
· Prticipate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates.
· Master basic movements including running, jumping, throwing and catching, as well as developing balance, agility and co-ordination, and begin to apply these in a range of activities. / Learn about the lives and achievements of the athletes Jesse Owens and Ellie Simmonds, including typical days in their lives. Learn about the key changes and developments in sport from 1936 to the present, take part in exercises and organise an alternative Olympics – The Vegetable Olympics! Plan this event, present ideas, make vegetable Olympic flags, participate in the grand event and develop a final victory parade.
Block L
Authors
(T)Shakespeare
(L)J.K. Rowling
[7 sessions] / History, English, Art, Music and D&T.
· Learn about the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements.
· Understand historical concepts such as continuity and change, cause and consequence, similarity, difference and significance, and use them to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends, frame historically-valid questions and create their own structured accounts, including written narratives and analyses.
· Understand the methods of historical enquiry, including how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims, and discern how and why contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed.
· Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history.
· Become increasingly familiar with and retelling a wider range of stories, fairy stories and traditional tales.
· Understand both the books they can already read accurately and fluently and those they listen to by drawing on what they already know or on background information and vocabulary provided by the teacher.
· Use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas.
· Speak audibly and fluently with an increasing command of Standard English.
· Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates.
· Gain, maintain and monitor the interest of the listener(s).
· Select from and use a range of tools and equipment to perform practical tasks [for example, cutting, shaping, joining and finishing].
· Play tuned and untuned instruments musically.
· Use a range of materials creatively to design and make products; To develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space. / Be inspired by the lives of William Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling. Compare their timelines, and compare the technologies they would have used to write their books. Study fantasy characters the authors created and make your own fantasy stories about a magical object. Learn about the café where Rowling wrote and create a writers’ café in the classroom. Discuss what you would write, before making your own books and writing your own fantastic stories.
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We refer you to our warning, at the foot of the block overview, about links to other websites.